Jonathan Powell - Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji - Piano Sonata No. 4 (2004)

Listening to this sonata is like looking at a richly detailed painting. On first seeing it, it strikes you as an incredibly full canvas. It's a matter of deciding what to look at first, the whole picture or the elements that make up the work. The first thing you wonder when you hear the beginning of this sonata is "Is that only one pianist?" In every movement Sorabji has packed in up to seven themes, usually played simultaneously, or contrapuntal voices. His music is complex, he meant it to be performed only by truly skilled musicians, but it is not unapproachable for the average person to hear, as Jonathan Powell proves. Powell does an astounding job making every line clear, so you can pick out the individual parts, but at the same time giving each movement, or in the case of the last movement, each section of it, an overall shape and sound. The middle movement, "Count Tasca's Garden," was called by Sorabji "an extended and elaborate nocturne, sultry and exotic in character." Powell gives you exactly that, a lush, warm, living garden as visited at night. The sections of the final movement are each a recognizable Baroque form (Prelude, Fantasia, Fugues) and although not really tonally based, as Bach's music is, in Powell's hands they are just as affecting as Bach. Powell has proved that he is a truly skilled musician, and his sympathy for Sorabji's works is entirely worthy of the praise he's been receiving.